Special Elections Show Need for New Democratic Message and Leadership

While they have sufficiently faded from news coverage in recent weeks, it is worth analyzing the special elections held in 2017 given the political importance they held throughout the first half of the year.

Special elections have long been opportune times for a motivated minority party to mobilize and make profound statements about the direction of the country. At first glance, their results seem to be over-publicized and over-weighted in importance. However, the results mean little when there is no big swing to the minority party and the incumbent party retains the seat.

Democrats faced two more disappointments last month when they lost special elections in both South Carolina and Georgia to Republicans. These two losses bring the Democrat’s record to 0 for 4 in special elections this year.

Democrats lost by 3.8 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. While these loses were blows to the party, they were significantly lower margins of defeat than the results in November, when the Republican won in Georgia by 23.2 percentage points and in South Carolina by 20.3.

Jon Ossoff’s campaign garnered national attention in Georgia and brought millions of dollars into the race. While the election results were a lot closer than those in November, there was significantly more Republican support than in other races. The added interest brought more turnout than any other special election, and was ultimately what led to Ossoff’s loss.

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 26: (L to R) Steve Handel (2nd from L) looks on Speaker of the House Paul Ryan arrives and shakes hands with Representative-elect Karen Handle (R-GA) before a ceremonial swearing-in on Capitol Hill, June 26, 2017 in Washington, DC. Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in the most expensive House race in U.S. history. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Historic examples of special elections exemplify this phenomenon well.

In 1974, five Democratic challengers won shocking upsets in five historically Republican districts, which served as the first step toward Democrats retaking the White House two years later and leading a unified government through the end of the decade. In 1994, two Republicans won equally surprising victories in former Democratic strongholds.

This year, the Democrats surely could have seized this same opportunity. Democrats made up an average of 10 points against Republican win margins from November 2016.

Going 0 for 4 in these special elections is a definite hit to the morale, but is it indicative of a larger trend? Not necessarily.

Looking past the outcome of wins or losses in the special elections, the numbers show a promising story. However, their losses still show they are not connecting with voters. If there is any hope for turning those losses into wins, the party must adapt. Relying on presumed antipathy toward President Trump is not enough.

Yet at a time when the President in the majority party is historically unpopular, to make that modest of a change, while the underlying results were not changed, does not bode well for the Democratic Party’s future. Trump’s unpopularity provides an opportunity for a big swing for Democrats if they employ a winning strategy.

The Democrats must implement a party strategy nationwide that is fundamentally different from what the party’s leadership has offered thus far. This alternative agenda, which is consistent with past Democratic success, practice, and rhetoric, must center on the following core initiatives:

First, a plan to boost economic growth, rather than promote redistribution.

Second, a tax reform policy that offers tax cuts across the board, rather than raising rates on the highest earners.

Third, reemphasizing traditional values and embracing religiosity as a positive organizing force, rather than accepting secularism.

Fourth, promoting tolerance of those within the party who may not embrace all aspects of the party’s agenda, rather than sow division.

To be clear, the party’s leadership is largely to blame for this radical movement to the far-left.

While Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer initially promised he would offer an alternative agenda, he summarily kowtowed to the resistance and dubbed himself part of it.

Nancy Pelosi has been even worse, acting as a millstone around the party's neck and serving as the focus of negative advertising in recent elections.

Let’s be clear: The Democrats need a new leadership, need one quickly, and need new ideas.

Democrats must change their approach from resistance at every step to an alternative strategy, under which they are willing to cooperate with an unpopular President. Fixing the issues remains more important to voters than obstructionism.

This trend has already cost the Democrats 11 Senate seats, 63 House seats, 10 governorships, and hundreds of state legislative seats since 2010.

The fear has always been that if the Democratic Party changes its positions and moves to the center, the base will vanish.

This was the stated concern of President Clinton and his top advisers in 1995 when I played a central role in repositioning the President as a centrist.

He was focused on a balanced budget, deficit reduction, welfare reform, being tough on crime, and standing up for traditional values. But the argument that the base would leave did not hold sway then, and it does not hold sway now.

The base has nowhere to go.

Even if the base prefers the red meat of left-wing populism, as they did in the mid-1990s, Democratic leaders must understand they must move to the center in order to win back the working-class Democrats who had previously defected to President Trump.

The most mobilized segments of the party felt that way in the mid-1990s and they feel that way now. Nothing has changed. If anything, traditional Democratic voters have gotten more economically insecure as wages have stagnated, good jobs have disappeared, and health care and education costs have skyrocketed.

Without a strategy to win back these groups, the Democratic party cannot hope to put together a governing majority. These initiatives, more than twenty years ago, gave Bill Clinton the credibility as a fiscal conservative and a cultural moderate that was essential to regaining the support of suburban moderates. The same thing needs to be done today.

We saw clear evidence of the defection in the Midwest during the November 2016 election and the recent special elections. In each of these elections, swing voters in suburban areas voted Republican and have been consistently trending Republican since voting for Trump last fall.

It starts with a pro-growth economic agenda, rather than redistribution.

Democrats need a greater focus on job training and retraining at community colleges in order to prepare our workforce for success.

Further, Democrats should emphasize tax relief to the working and middle classes, like the income and corporate tax cuts President Kennedy introduced in 1963 and the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986, rather than push for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Third, as secularism becomes the dominant trend among coastal elites, the Democrats must return to traditional values, assert religiosity as a positive force, and make clear that the party has not abandoned its traditional roots despite Hollywood and hedge-funders. Religiosity has always played a central, even if unrecognized, role in party messaging. In his 1961 inaugural address, President Kennedy explained that we are a nation united by “the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God,” and President Jimmy Carter acknowledged in his 1975 inaugural address that “ours was the first society openly to define itself in terms of both spirituality and human liberty.”

Lastly, Democrats need to emphasize unity within and outside of the party. Subjecting qualified Democratic candidates to a litmus test on issues such as abortion or single-payer health care is problematic for a political party.

Seeking to divide and demonize always fails.

More generally, if the goal is only to demonize Republican opponents and those who do not cue to the Democratic line, the result will be a more limited party with a more limited base. We need to avoid the brutal politics of polarization, which has been alienating swing voters and suburban moderates.

Put simply, this may seem to many as an appeal to the past and a recipe for alienating much of the party. It is neither.

It is a return to traditional American values and concerns that have become heightened over the past two years.

There is nothing that President Trump did during his campaign that Democrats should not emulate and expropriate the way we did in the mid-1990s to get Bill Clinton reelected and win both the House and the Senate. Democrats need to understand that party success lies in the past that they cannot continue to ignore.